Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/486

 178 Folklore of the Algerian Hills and Desert.

Naturally the scribes who make money by preparing written charms deride the wearing of substances popularly supposed to be distasteful to Jenun such as rue, asafoetida, coral, iron, copper, pepper and salt, or which are believed to instil fear into the demon, subject as he is to death ; for example, gunpowder, flattened bullets, vipers' heads, the bodies of scorpions and the canine teeth of dogs. They further state that the gesture of extending the fingers, accompanied by the remark " Five in thine eye " and the wearing of the gesture ready-made in the shape of a con- ventionalized silver model of a human hand, are equally useless in warding off the attacks of the Jenun whom all agree accompanies the envious glance known as the " Evil Eye."

Such methods in magic they characterize as old wives' tales, but these methods are nevertheless universally adopted by the Shawiya and the Arabs in addition to the wearing of written amulets.

The scribes, however, do consent to co-operate in the exorcism of Jenun by means other than the use of written charms. Should a person become possessed by a Jinn which he has disturbed by, for example, stumbling inad- vertently into a stream or a pool of blood spilled upon the ground which it inhabits, a scribe is consulted with a view to ascertaining the religion of the demon. I have not yet found out how this is accomplished, but since it was a sorceress who informed me that a scribe should be called in, it would appear that the methods of divination em- ployed by professional sorceresses themselves by means of either a spindle and a girdle or of a suspended spindle- whorl and two intersecting lines drawn upon an up-turned dish, both of which I described in my former paper, are inadequate to the task. When the scribe has pronounced upon this subject, a sacrificial meal is prepared upon a certain day of the week, the day and the colour of the victim, which should be a e:oat, thousjh a fowl will suffice